Recently, an actor-friend said to me “You have to use yourself in your work, what else do you have?” Seems logical enough, doesn’t it? But what “self” was he talking about? The defended, habitual self that limits choices, ideas, even perception?

A wonderful, old definition of acting is “committing private acts in public.” But what does this mean? It means that actors must have the freedom to be a fool in public, brave enough to lose and be humiliated, courageous enough to look stupid, to allow, even seek to let the ugliness and the neediness show through, to appear physically, vocally or emotionally unattractive, to share fantasies and dreams, no matter how much you may be mocked or derided.